RALEIGH, N.C. - A Department of Energy audit says the Savannah River Site did not meet several safety standards when building a new facility.
The 31-page report released last month also found that one of the mistakes at the site near the South Carolina-Georgia border could have resulted in a spill of high-level radioactive waste.
The safety issues involved a facility that is being built to convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
According to the report, three structural components obtained and installed by the prime contractor at SRS during construction of the mixed oxide fuel fabrication, or MOX, facility did not meet safety specifications.
"These substandard items necessitated costly and time consuming remedial action to, among other things, ensure that nonconforming materials and equipment would function within safety margins," the report said.
The report said installing the components resulted in cost increases. As of October, the report said, the MOX facility had run up costs of more than $680,000 resulting from problems associated with nonconforming safety-class reinforcing steel. The faulty steel was discovered after a piece of it broke during construction.
Weaknesses in internal control, according to the report, could have led to the installation of critical components that didn't meet standards and could have injured workers and the public.
A message left seeking comment from Savannah River Site spokesman Jim Gaver was not immediately returned.
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Full articles with more information are avaialable and certainly are important for this area. They wasted over 8 million dollars by allowing sub standard construction to progress without proper inspections prior to payments. Our government is out of control with their spending and someone, anyone, must bring this back under control.
Every job I've worked on under government contract involved triple inspections at every point from beginning to end. The delays caused by the inspections play havoc with the schedule if they aren't taken into consideration during bidding. If there was faulty material used at SRS, you can bet there was money exchanged under the table. The contractors and inspectors BOTH knew it was happening. Heads should roll.
Here's PT again showing a lack of compassion.
Lack of compassion? I'm sorry but over 8 million dollars wasted becuase of sub-standard steel being used is unacceptable by anyone's standards. The builders cheated and the inspectors either failed to do their job or as PT put it knew what was going on. Either way, the tax payers are now out over 8 million dollars - ridiculous!!
While Senator Graham babbles on that SRS is the "tip of the spear" for his vision of wasting money, turns out it's the tip of the iceberg for waste, fraud and abuse. Time for much more intense oversight of this pit which sucks down our tax money and, beyond clean up, yields no productive good or service.